10. Jan Koum
Most of us use WhatsApp to communicate with our family and friends, whether they’re abroad or local. It’s pretty amazing to know that its founder, Jan Koum, who is now worth over $8 billion, was once poor. The CEO was born in Ukraine, in a household with no running water.
When he was 16, he moved to the United States with his mom and they lived on welfare and food stamps. In high school, he taught himself about computers and later landed a job at Yahoo where he climbed the ladder. After being rejected for a job at Facebook, Jan came up with WhatsApp, which Facebook ended up acquiring in 2014 for an astounding $16 billion.
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